Flippy - I Rant, You Read
Monday, June 18, 2007
Another Pain Doctor Gets Prison, Instead of Gratitude
I’ve read several accounts lately of pain management doctors being sentenced to prison for trying to help their patients. They didn’t sell drugs, abuse drugs, or knowingly prescribe drugs to patients who were abusing their medications. The latest story is about a D.O., a doctor of osteopathy, which means that he has all the training of an M.D., but he also has training to do manipulations, like a chiropractor. Dr. McIver was sentenced to 30 years in prison for drug trafficking. Please read the story that I’ve linked to if you’ve ever been in significant pain, know someone who is living with pain, or think you might ever be in pain someday. Your knowledge about pain could help keep a well-meaning doctor out of prison if you’re ever sitting on his jury. Everyone agrees that Dr. McIver tried to help his patients. He wasn’t a pill mill. He treated his patients’ pain with a variety of physical therapies, pain medications, and information on how to help themselves with treatments at home. His only “flaw” seems to be that while other doctors are satisfied when their patients are living with 5 on the pain scale of 1 - 10, Dr. McIver tried to get his patients to 2. Can any of you tell me that you’d want to quit seeking less pain when you’d reached 5? If so, you’re a masochist. Yes, Dr. McIver sometimes prescribed very large amounts of opioids, but his patients agreed that he was trying to help them. Also, opioids are safe if you increase your dosage gradually. If we took five 80mg pills of OxyContin a few times a day, we might die from an overdose. But, if you took what my body is used to, you wouldn’t die, but you would get sick. We all have a different tolerance level, and if 20 80mg pills of OxyContin give someone a life without a significant amount of pain, who are we to say that they shouldn’t take so much, because that sure does seem like a lot of milligrams to us. However, would you feel comfortable taking away the meds that are allowing someone to actually have a life, instead of being stuck in bed or stuck at home due to their pain? If the drugs aren’t killing them, but are helping them live with chronic pain, we should be grateful there are doctors who are able to help these people. People like me. People like Leigh-Ann.
Unfortunately, many juries end up with judgmental people like Jo Handy on them. Because she once had some “female issues” and was prescribed some pain meds, she feels as though she’s qualified to judge what amount of pain medication other people deserve. “Thirty counts is normal,” she said. “He was giving 60 or 90. A few of us had been on prescribed medicine. I had female issues. You as a person know not to take so much of that medication. If you were, you had a motive. Me, I still have a whole bottle left.” LOL, she’s going by the number of pills? So, 30 pills is normal? What if someone had 30 80mg pills? And someone else had 60 5mg pills? 2400 mgs a month is less than 300, because 30 pills is fewer than 60? Because of illogical people like this, a doctor who wanted to get rid of his patients’ pain, is in prison for 30 years. I know I shouldn’t think this way, but if those people could experience severe chronic pain for a year, I’d love to hear how their opinions would change. When you’re in severe pain, you don’t care about numbers or milligrams, you care about what will relieve your pain and give you your life back.
When you’re on a jury, handing down judgments on a doctor who was trying to help his patients, I want you to remember that one day one of those pain patients might be you or a loved one. Dr. McIver had some scummy patients, but those patients had or have something that caused them real pain. The doctor treated these people with respect, and wanted to make sure that they felt as pain-free as possible. The scumbags got meds that they didn’t need and they either sold them or injected them. Now that the doctor has been wrongly convicted, the people who caused the problems for him are suing him for “alleged overprescription of addictive drugs.” I can’t believe that these cases aren’t being tossed out, and the people suing tossed into prison. Yeah right, it’s the doctor’s fault that you sold your prescription drugs or injected them? I would appreciate it if you would read the article, and if you don’t have a lot of time, then just read the first page and the last page. I think it’s important to read on the last page about Ben, who got such pain relief thanks to Dr. McIver that he could go back to doing strenuous physical work. He had his life back. Now that his doctor has been sentenced to prison, Ben has been sentenced to his own prison. No one is willing to give him the meds that he needs to be able to work. They’re giving him less than a third of the meds that he was given by Dr. McIver. His doctor was interviewed and said, ” There are well-recognized levels, and you don’t step across the line. You may have to live with some pain.” You may have to live with some pain? Can someone tell me why? Why does Ben have to live his pain? I’ll bet if the person in pain was, say, the doctor’s child, he wouldn’t think that his child needed to live with “some pain”. Ridiculous, this concept that people have to live with some pain. No, no they don’t. The high doses of opioids can be safely administered, and they’re a whole safer than Advil and Tylenol, which kill thousands of people a year. ”For individuals who are properly titrated and monitored, there is no ceiling on opioid dosage. In this sense, high-dose prescription opioids can be safer than taking high doses of aspirin, Tylenol or Advil, which cause organ damage in high doses, regardless of how those doses are administered. (Every year, an estimated 5,000 to 6,000 Americans die from gastrointestinal bleeding associated with drugs like ibuprofen or aspirin, according to a paper published in The American Journal of Gastroenterology.)”
John Tierney, a blogger for the New York Times Science section felt the same way as I did about dopey juror, Jo Handy. “One of the jurors in the McIver case, a realtor named Jo Handy, said she knew the doctor’s prescriptions were excessive because of her own experience taking pain killers for “female issues.” I wonder how she’d like having her house-appraisal skills judged by a jury of homeowners — and then sent to prison because they disagreed with her prices.”
Next entry: Activia - Because You Deserve Bifidus Regularis™? Previous entry: Methadone Is Great - It's Very Affordable, It Gets Rid of Pain, It Lasts A Long Time, But...
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Wow. This is outrageous. Thanks, as always, for providing much food for thought. And, boy that juror was an idiot. Female problems, indeed.
laurie on 06/18 at 01:23 PM -
This kind of story scares the crap out of me. I’m on low-dose pain killers, but I fear someone will complain about my doc, and then what will I do?
I would *love* for those people who say “suck it up” to live my life for a month and then get back to me.
The meds help me be a better me, a better mom and a better wife. I can function. Otherwise I’m stuck in bed. I know I’m preaching to the choir here.
Stupid/mean people SUCK.
Angel on 06/23 at 05:51 PM
